so easter weekend was 2 weeks ago already, and i'm just now getting around to blogging about it. this is because it was such a crazy jam-packed weekend (in a good way!) that it has taken me this long to recover.
(see pictures of the entire weekend here)
iccp kicked off our celebration of easter on maundy thursday. i have no idea what a traditional maundy thursday service looks like, but we used the occasion to create a prayer labyrinth to allow people to experience and reflect on the reality of Christ's death. we had stations set up all around the room, each portraying in a sensory manner a different element of His last days on earth, and then guiding people through prayer and reflection. for me, it was extremely powerful and moving to reflect in this way- to use all 5 senses to experience the reality of my Lord's sacrifice.
saturday, the day before easter, ended up being a beautiful sunny day in provence, and we held an all-church picnic/easter egg hunt. we had a ton of people hanging out together at the park, and all kinds of fun stuff going on, including an easter egg hunts for every age. we had a bunch of our jr. high and high school youth group kids come, and we set up an entire easter egg hunt challenge for them. believe me, this was no normal easter egg hunt, it began with each team searching for the extremely well-hidden eggs in their team's color, before moving to an obstacle course that concluded with a dizzy bat race to a limbo finish line. watching 15 teenagers dizzy bat their way to a limbo line- how can that not be hilarious? i think the picnic was a highlight of the weekend for all of us, as it was a really great time of connection with a ton of people, especially since a lot of the youth group kids brought their families who would never normally come to church.
easter sunday meant waking up really early (at a time the human body was meant to be sleeping) for an easter sunrise service. it's early, but man is it a beautiful way to celebrate Christ's resurrection! we then headed to the french church's easter service, then an ecumenical service where all the churches, catholic and protestant (and us...), gathered to declare Christ's resurrection. the staff rewarded ourselves for all of our early morning work by enjoying an incredible 4 hour lunch (feast!) on the outdoor patio of an amazing restaurant out in the country. (and just to be sure that we squeezed all the celebrating we could into the weekend, we had a birthday party for hilary that night.)
the monday after easter is a holiday in france (and they claim to be a secular country!), so the iccp tradition is to hike mount saint victoire en masse on easter monday. exhausting. and so fun. of course, having my dear friend erin (from westmont) and her fiance mike here made the weekend even better.
ok, i'm exhausted again just thinking about all the stuff we crammed into easter weekend. or maybe i'm just exhausted after my work day today, which consisted of driving around southern france and repeatedly getting lost. definitely another story for another blog. this job is like no other...
Thursday, April 19, 2007
We totally know how to celebrate holidays here at iccp. Or, Why I needed 2 weeks to recover from Easter.
Posted by kerri at 10:20 PM
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1 comment:
Sounds amazing! - That is the way to celebrate Easter, we could all learn something...
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